New sermon time! I know I’ve been out of town, so there was that minor little absence. Hope you enjoy this one.
Mark 10:35-45; Hebrews 5:1-10; Psalm 91:9-16; Isaiah 53:4-12
A few weeks ago, the gospel lesson was from Mark 9, where Jesus’ disciples were arguing amongst themselves about which of them was the greatest. Today’s gospel is right along the same lines. Only this time, it’s even more telling. Let’s be honest here, I bet if Jesus did grant their request they’d then argue about who sat at the right and who sat at the left! Anyways, this whole line of reasoning started back in Mark 8. Peter has always been kind of the leader of the disciples. He tends to be the one to speak when Jesus addresses the Twelve, and he sort of takes charge in the book of Acts after Jesus ascends into heaven. Peter’s status goes up when he confesses Jesus as the Messiah in Mark 8:29, only to plummet in Mark 8:33 with Jesus’ rebuke after Jesus taught that he would go to Jerusalem and be killed. Peter’s status drops again with the events of the transfiguration, when he wanted to stay up on the mountain with Elijah, Moses, and Jesus.
When the four of them; Jesus, Peter, James, and John; came down from the mountain, the other nine disciples were trying and failing at casting out an evil spirit. When they couldn’t, their status among the others dropped again, really leaving James and John as the only ones who hadn’t got in trouble for a while. And so we get to our lesson for today. Jesus had just finished telling the disciples, yet again, that he was headed into Jerusalem where he would be betrayed to the religious leaders, handing over to the Romans, and brutally killed before rising again on the third day.
Then James and John pick this moment to have a little chat with Jesus. The timing seems a little odd, and the ignorance they display is a little astounding. They ask to be given positions of power when Jesus reigns. Apparently they forgot that just before this Jesus said he was off to die. But Jesus gives them a way out; he says, “You don’t know what you’re asking. Can you really go through what I’m about to go through?” James and John apparently still don’t process, because they say “Yup!”
Understandably so, when the other disciples figure out what just happened, they’re not too pleased with James and John, so Jesus uses it as a teaching moment. He compares human leadership with the kind of leadership God is looking for – God isn’t looking for someone with power, but with the heart of a servant.
This idea goes against our human nature. We think of leaders as people who tell others what to do, not as people who do things for others. But you’d think the disciples, people who had a pretty good familiarity with the Hebrew Scriptures, would have picked up on this a little better. A good chuck of Isaiah, chapters 40-55 by our reckoning, talks about God’s servant leader.
Our 1st lesson today is part of the last of the “servant songs” in this section, where God talks about the kind of person the Messiah will be. This one begins, “See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him—his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness—so will he sprinkle may nations…” (Is 52:13-15a). As Lutheran Christians, we look at this and pointing it to the cross is a simple thing. Jesus is, quite literally, raised up on the cross. And we profess that in the shame of the cross, God’s glory and power is revealed to the world. So this isn’t new to us, but it would be new to the disciples. The passage continues, in the reading from Isaiah 53, by describing the things the cross would accomplish. These are all things that James and John didn’t understand when they asked Jesus to sit at his right and left. They still saw Jesus as a powerful ruler not a humble servant.
The writer of Hebrews tries a little to bridge this gap. Isaiah tells us that the Messiah is to be a servant, and Jesus says in Mark’s gospel that those who want to be great must serve the others. So the writer of Hebrews, while looking at Jesus as the High Priest, sees the position of High Priest as a role of service. The High Priest is a sort of go-between between man and God, chosen by God for that purpose. Part of the High Priest’s job is to offer sacrifices for the forgiveness of sin. In Jesus case it was the ultimate sacrifice, the giving of his life so others can be forgiven.
So when James and John claimed they could share that part of Jesus’ service, it makes a lot more sense why he responded how he did. James and John could not have offered themselves as the sacrifice to forgive the sins of the entire world – they thought something different was coming. Even if they understood that Jesus was to be killed, and thought following him to that death would bring them glory, they didn’t grasp the full importance of it.
Yet there is something interesting to note here. Of James and John, one was the first of the Twelve (not counting Judas) to be martyred, and the other spent a good deal of his life in exile. James was killed by Herod, recording in Acts 12, just for being a Christian. John, however, likely died in Ephesus almost 70 years after the time of the Gospels. That’s not to say his life was easy. A decent part of it was spent in exile on a small island called Patmos. He underwent numerous arrests and other persecutions. They shared the same sufferings as Christ.
James and John sought to gain honor by asking to sit at Jesus right or left. From the world’s perspective all they got was suffering: one died horrible death, the other lived a long life filled with pain and loss. They received none of the earthly rewards they were looking for in our gospel for today. But after the death and resurrection of Jesus their perspectives changed. They understood what Jesus meant when he said they must be servants to all. They knew without a doubt that their sins were forgiven and that Jesus had already prepared a place for them in heaven. And they knew that, even with its suffering and pain, life with Jesus was infinitely better than life without.